Reviews 373 awkward constructions. I would cite the following as most jarring: “Fear horrider than” (p. 113); “God who gave my fathers rule” (p. 227); “a million of the people obeyed me” (p. 245). On the other hand, the number of felicitous phrasing is immense. These are not “easy” plays. The Un-Divine Comedy, the first play to treat revolution as envisaged by twentieth-century rebels, is effective theater but on the level of Teatr Mundi. The world is its setting, and humanity makes up its cast. In the hands of an inventive director, the play could work. Slowacki’s Fantazy is another matter. It is truly a funplay , filled with sunshine and smiles, lovely ladies holding on to their heralded virginity, and courtly and uncourtly gentlemen who have ap parently kissed and smothered the Polish Blarney Stone. And it all seems to have been written in English! The satire is broad, and the characters provide ample fodder for good actors. A volume like this would be an ideal one for any course in Slavic Drama. Unfortunately the price is prohibitive. Hopefully a paperback edition will follow. It should be a standard edition for all courses on Slavic Theater. E. J. CZERWINSKI SUNY at Stony Brook Timo Tiusanen. Dürrenmatt. A Study in Plays, Prose, Theory. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1977. Pp. xiii + 486. $25 (hardcover). Elisabeth Brock-Sulzer wrote the first book on Dürrenmatt, and it was wonderfully subjective. Peter Spycher investigated the stories of the playwright in a reliably philological style. Ulrich Profitlich published his very theoretical considerations about structure and dramaturgical rules. And hundreds of beginners, journalists, and famous and unknown scholars go on to speculate on the Swiss poet who doesn’t like these speculations. Or, as Mr. Tiusanen puts it: ‘Teasing his critics and interviewers is part of Durrenmatt’s publicity game”(7). There is still an exciting chance to write the long-expected mono graph. Could it come from a born outsider who would write on the professional outsider? Mr. Tiusanen is a Finlander and publishes his book at Princeton—far away from Berne or one of the traditional centres of the Occident (“Europe City” in the film “Mississippi”). The author is diligent and doesn’t have the teutonic disease to expose a private pseudo-philosophy within so-called literary research. He is modest, too. Writing on the local scandal with regard to the literary prize of the city of Berne in 1969, Tiusanen confesses: “I only know Durrenmatt’s contribution to these polemics, and this is not enough for a more detailed discussion” (402). He writes well and knows a lot of reviews certainly not available at Princeton or Helsinki. He is an insider, too: looking not down from an ivory tower but doing practical work within the theater world. In Finland, he directed for instance The Visit, together with Sakari Puurunen. 374 Comparative Drama In three chapters, “Entering the Stage,” “Creative Outburst,” and “Victories and Defeats,” the major and minor works are commented on, and the development of the writer—and political person, fortunately— is outlined. The Visit, as usual, gets special attention though Romulus seems to be a favorite play of Mr. Tiusanen. He is quite aware of the difficulties which arise in bringing an old topic in new forms; adaptions such as Play Strindberg get a more careful analysis than in any other book I know. Pictures of certain performances, a list of works, an almost complete bibliography, and an index are very useful. Princeton University Press, of course, did an excellent editing job: I discovered only one misprint (Shaefer instead of Schaefer). Some questions remain. Why so many pictures of partly irrelevant performances and none of the paintings? Why among the enormous number of reviews and articles not even mention the very interesting essays of French experts such as Gignoux and Ivemel? Or Nina Pavlova’s Russian book? Why no deeper thoughts on the opera elements? The subtitle is, I know, “A study in Plays, Prose, Theory” which obviously means that we should not expect a study in the creative personality as a whole. But the author himself gives his introduction the promising title “A Host of Diirrenmatts...
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Sep 1, 2002
Henriette Coppens 
